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Going for a song

Phill Jupitus on The Birds Will Still Be Singing by Elvis Costello

Being someone who is easily manipulated by emotions means that I am more than fair game for any artist who can spin a heart-wrenching turn of phrase or construct just the right interplay of chords to tip me over into floods of tears. I vividly remember falling to wet pieces in the Leicester Square Odeon at Sarah McLachlan singing Randy Newman's When She Loved Me in Toy Story 2. After the initial deluge, such moments of weakness tend to make one feel somehow used. Emotional button-pushing is something anybody in the media can now do, seemingly at will. I shamefully recall, on one occasion, howling like a baby at a soup advert that had Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing on it. To be precise, it's the moment the single mum leans against the doorframe with a cup of soup and looks at her sleeping children, I am welling up now just